Evidence recently collected by the newly revamped United States intelligence community indicates that Venezuela is secretly developing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

Compiled from interviews with expatriate Venezuelan scientists, fuzzy satellite imagery, and pictures drawn by operatives on the ground, a vast array of evidence implicates the western hemisphere’s largest oil producing nation of developing not only nuclear arms, but the ballistic missiles required to deliver them long distances as well as a lot of other nasty stuff.

Commented Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, “From the hand drawn intelligence photos we’ve acquired recently, I’d say that the country of Venezuela likely has at least three nuclear warheads and the rocket technology needed to use them to reduce a city like Los Angeles or New York to a pile of radioactive rubble in a matter of minutes.”

Armitage added: “We’ve also received credible evidence, in the form of photographs and environmental samples taken from a number of sites, that the generation of chemical and biological weapons is being conducted around the country in mobile weapons labs disguised to look like portable toilets.”

The Bush administration has not yet specifically declared how it intends to manage the emerging threat of a nuclear Venezuela, but White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan made it clear during a press conference yesterday that the President has resolved to take a firm stance against the rogue nation and its leftist leader Hugo Chavez.

Spoke McClellan: “Hugo Chavez has stubbornly opposed the policies and good judgment of this administration innumerable times over the years, but the treacherous, clandestine development of weapons of mass destruction will not be tolerated. President Bush is currently evaluating his options on how to address the situation, but I assure you that anything short of unequivocal proof that these weapons have been dismantled will incur the full calculated response of the United States.”